Saute the garlic and onions in the olive oil. Add the ground beef and cook until done. Drain the excess grease and discard. Mix in the plumped currants.

Cut circles out of dough. Brush half of the circle's edge with the egg wash and place filling on half of the circle along with one or two pieces of egg. Fold over and seal well with a fork. Deep fry at 365 degrees or bake at 325 degrees until golden brown.

The empanadas go great with tomato sauce. Luckily, I had some friends invite me down to visit Eatwell Farms last weekend for a tomato sauce party. The farm was giving away 2 tons of tomatos for members of their CSA and friends.There were lots of people who came to the event fully equipped with all the tools for creating and canning tomato sauce from scratch. So many passionate cooks. The tomatoes were great. Even the Food Diva showed up to create a batch of sauce along with Heather. Too bad Byron could not make it, he was busy representing Pachamama Coffee Coop at the Jack London Square Farmers Market in Oakland.

I brought home some glorious green tomatoes. Not unripened tomatoes, but fully ripe green tomatoes. Not sure what kind of tomatoes these were, but they made for a glorious green gazpacho. There were some green zebra tomatos, but some of these green tomatoes were of a different variety. Maybe they were Evergreen, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Green Giant, Green Grape or Grandma Oliver's Grape tomatos?!

Tune: Green Grass by Cibelle is a sweet Tom Waits Cover on Six Degrees Records. The Tom Waits tune is on his Real Gone cd."Harp sounds, metal and wood percussion and a backwards guitar track move over a shuffling beat that would make old Tom proud"

Sift all the dry ingredients and work in the chilled butter along with the lemon zest and vanilla or almond extract by hand. Mix just until dough is formed.

Wrap and chill dough for 45 minutes.

Roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thick and cut into circles.

Bake at 325 for about 2o minutes until baked, but not brown.

Allow the cookies to chill in a cool spot.

All over Latin America, maicena is used for cooking and baking. I remember getting a bunch of recipes in Venezuela that call for maicena and I didn't realize it was the same as corn starch. I took a box home to San Francisco only to realize that it is available as "corn starch" in just about every store in town, and that many Latin supermarkets even carry it as "maicena" here in SF... same thing anyhow.

Tune: Dominicana by Tego Calderon from the El Abayarde album. This is one of the few reggaeton albums that really interests me as an entire album. Tego's other albums are all great, but this is my favorite. An essential. You can hear this song mixed with El Gran Combo's Ojitos Chinos and another tune by Jota Mayusculo and mala Rodriguez that uses the same theme in El Cuñado del Beatwalla mix.

So here are the alfajores cookies made from maicena, all purpose flour, plenty of butter, ground almonds, salt and powdered sugar. After they cool to room temp, they are ready to fill with dulce de leche.Dulce de Leche

Scrape the vanilla bean and add seeds and bean to the cream in a small pot. Heat the cream and steep for 1/2 hour. Remove the bean. Keep this vanilla cream warm.

Combine the sugar with 1 cup of cold water and cook over medium heat in a stainless steel pan. Cook the sugar to a golden caramel without mixing. When the caramel becomes a dark golden color, slowly add the warm vanilla cream and whisk over medium low heast for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in the butter and salt.Pour the caramel onto a pan to cool to room temperature. The cooler it gets, the more it will set up.

Fill dulce de leche into a pastry bag and chill for a few minutes to firm it up.Pipe a little dulce de leche between two cookies.Tune: El Caramelo by Los Aguakates. I bought this CD on the beach in the Dominican Republic.. I'm pretty certain that this group is different than these guys who also seem interesting.

For more cumbia beats stay tuned to Bay Area DJs like Juan Data, who just put out a nice mix called Koombia Mestiza. And the Baylando crew. Kool Kyle has some great Hip Hop Cumbia mixes for download on the Baylando myspace page. And go check them out live... Don't sleep.

At the fabric8 record sale this summer I found this record in J Boogie's bin. 2 bucks! I knew the Capelton tune well and was happily surprised to find other heavy hitter artists pon the Muslim riddim. Now I have to find the Cutty Ranks tune on this riddim. Don't miss J Boogie at the Soul Cocina Feast Afterparty.

There is also a Yucatan Vietnamese restaurant on Mission Street in SF.Yucatecan and Tunisian are actually two of my favorite cuisines. Too bad they did not have any of the Tunisian items available when I went for lunch the other day. I ordered one salbute, one panucho, one taco and a tamarind agua fresca. The meats were chicken, carne asada and poc chuc. It was not bad, but the Yucatecan restaurant on 16th street in SF, Poc Chuc is way better.You can find some cumbias song in the Mayan language of Yucatan in this Soul Cocina post from a few years ago. I'll reload the mp3 files on request if anyone is interested. I'd be impressed if you are still reading this at all... what a run on post!

For breakfast this morning I prepared one of my favorite south Indian dishes using a staple of North Africa. Upma is made with course semolina. Cous Cous (not a grain, but a tiny pasta made from semolina) works great for upma!

Cous cous Upma with Poached Egg

I saute onion garlic and ginger in ghee then add carots and red chillies. Then I add the cous cous and some of those great Eatwell Farms tomatoes, chopped. Then I add water and tumeric and bring to a boil. Cover and remove from heat to absorb the water and cook the cous cous. Then I heat a pan with coconut oil and add mustard seeds, more chillies and grated coconut. The coconut toasts and the mustard seeds pop. Then I add curry leaves to toast. Then turn up the heat for a second on the cous cous upma, toss in some chopped cilantro and then put it into a mold of a coffee cup. Meanwhile I poach an egg in tumeric water. I unmold the upma onto a plate and cover with the coconut/ curry leaf/ mustard seed mix and serve with cucumbers tossed in lemon juice and sea salt under a poached egg.

Inspired by the upma at MTR Bangalore. They serve fantastic udupi meals. And they are still top notch even though they "sold out" last year for 80 million bucks. Thats a whole lotta lakhs and crores of rupees. My upma is in the photo above. The Upma below is a picture I took of the MTR upma in Bangalore a while back. My upma had better tomatoes! Only thing my upma missed was the cashews.